Customer small business financing solutions delivered through a single, online application.
Loan Types
Free access to multiple funding solutions
See funding solutions from 75+ nationwide lenders with a single application.
Apply for financing, track your business cashflow, and more with a single lendio account.
Home Business Loans How to Track Expenses for PPP Loan Forgiveness
If you applied for and received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan, you’re likely very aware of the uses, expectations, and tracking requirements needed to achieve loan forgiveness. If you’re not, we’ll give you a refresher here, along with another basic guide for how best to track the movement of every single one of your PPP dollars.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness specifications are pretty strict when it comes to funds usage. There are 2 core categories of which you need to be aware: “payroll” and “other business expenses.” To get the forgiveness we all hope you will, it’s vital that you keep to these approved uses and within the amounts stipulated by the SBA (more on that in a bit).
Contrary to what some people might expect, “payroll” doesn’t just include the paychecks passed out to employees. When it comes to the PPP loan category, quite a few other business costs also fall under the payroll umbrella. In addition to employee compensation, these include:
This category may seem like the catch-all bag, but it’s not. The forgiveness requirements are quite specific on the qualifications and general parameters surrounding the term “other.” Fortunately, we’ve got the list right here:
Not only do you have to worry about how you use your PPP loan funds, but you also need to take special care of how much you use between those 2 categories. According to the forgiveness details section of SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program page, you must use no less than 75% of the loan amount to cover the payroll costs listed above. Additionally, they state that forgiveness is based on whether or not you maintain or quickly rehire employees at their original salary, but “forgiveness will be reduced if full-time headcount declines, or if salaries and wages decrease.”
All of that means you desperately need to stay on top of your books, track your spending, and have a paper trail for every penny received and spent. Fortunately, we’ve got a pretty great tool that can take your bookkeeping to the next level.
Bjolan Holyoak is a small business finance writer based in Utah. As a copywriter for Lendio, he fuels the American Dream by giving small business owners the information they crave. He believes that with the right panache, financial information can be as much of a "breath of fresh air" as a hike in the Utah mountains.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for industry news and business strategies and tips
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for industry news and business strategies and tips.